[caption id="attachment_140518" align="aligncenter" width="4135"] Republican presidential candidate, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (AP Photo/Jonathan Bachman)
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Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry went after President Obama hard Sunday morning over his administration's failure to crack down down on illegal immigrants and on "sanctuary city" policies around the country.
Obama is doing “absolutely nothing to prevent incidents like the murder of Kate Steinle,” Perry told John Catsimatidis on “The Cats Roundtable” on AM 970 in New York.
Steinle is a 32-year-old woman who was allegedly shot in San Francisco by a Mexican immigrant laborer who had been deported five times and had been convicted of seven previous felonies.
“There are over 200 sanctuary cities and counties in this country, and the U.S. Department of Justice has done absolutely nothing – nothing! – to prevent this,” the former Texas governor continued.
“They should have been using the legal ability sanctioning these cities, sanctioning these counties, denying federal funding. It’s dangerous. It’s got to stop. We should pull the federal funding on these cities and counties that are promoting sanctuary policies."
Other 2016 candidates have been piling on the Obama administration in the wake of Steinle's murder.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) told Fox Business this week that the sanctuary city “problem is exacerbated” by the Obama administration.
“We deal with the problem that the Obama administration consistently refuses to enforce the laws,” he said. “[It] is just not the cities who are defying the law. It’s the federal government.”
Cruz, along with Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) have filed an amendment to the Every Child Achieves Act, now pending on the Senate floor, that would take funding away from sanctuary cities and give it to municipalities that comply with the law.
Sen. Rand Paul (R- Ky.), is also rolling out legislation.
He is expected to introduce a measure requiring state and local agencies to tell U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when they’ve arrested an illegal immigrant, The Hill reported. Under this law, the agencies would have to hold someone if ICE requested it.
Paul’s proposal would also tie state and local law enforcement grants to compliance with federal immigration laws.